Viewed from his standpoint the question was a hard one to answer. The sun warmed him, the leaves sheltered him, the passers-by nourished him, all apparently to his utmost satisfaction. I felt instinctively that the state of his mind was the only refuge for the upholders of civilisation and a high standard of comfort. So I asked him what he thought about all day long. His reply brought total eclipse to all my lights.
"Huzoor!" he said gravely, "I meditate on the Beauty of Holiness."
It was then that the text already quoted became indissolubly mixed up with the spreading shesham branches, the glare beyond, and that life-sized penwiper in the foreground. I whistled the refrain of a music-hall song and pretended to light my pipe. "How long have you been here?" I asked, after a time, during which he sat still as a graven image with his closed eyes towards the uncertain mirage of the river.
"'Tis nigh on thirty years, my lord, since I have been waiting."
"Waiting for what?"
"For the Footstep of Death--hark!" he paused suddenly, and a tremor came to his closed eyelids as he gave the cry: "In the name of your God!"
The next instant a faint creak told me that the first passenger from the newly-arrived ferry-boat had set foot on the bridge. "You have quick ears, fakeer-ji," I remarked.
"I live on footsteps, my lord."
"And when the Footstep of Death comes, you will die of one, I presume!"
He turned his face towards me quickly; it gave me quite a shock to find a pair of clear, light-brown eyes looking at, or rather beyond, me. From his constantly closed lids I had imagined that--as is so often the case in small-pox--the organs of sight were hopelessly diseased or altogether destroyed; indeed I had been grateful for the concealment of a defect out of which many beggars would have made capital. But these eyes were apparently as perfect as my own, and extraordinarily clear and bright--so clear that it seemed to me as if they did not even hold a shadow of the world around them. The surprise made me forget my first question in another.